apple and blackberry crumble cake

apple and blackberry crumble cake

20 Jul 2020

This cake is a tale of 2 cities and 2 recipes. I saw a photo of a blackberry and apple streusel cake in the Coles magazine and planned to make it while I was in Brisbane. I ran out of time so I froze the filling and took it back home to Sydney with me. The cake, which I then made in Sydney using the filling, was adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe. 




The recipe makes a simple but moist butter cake with a blackberry filling topped with apple slices, blackberries and an irresistibly crunchy crumble. You can make the blackberry layer and the crumble some time in advance. 



Blackberries are pretty expensive at the moment so I used frozen berries to make both the filling and the cake. Don't bother defrosting the berries before using them as frozen berries keep their shape better whilst cooking. You could leave out the blackberry layer if you wanted to and just stud the top with blackberries. Or if you wanted to, you could leave out the blackberries entirely and make an apple crumble cake. I promise you it will still be delicious.




Here's the recipe for you, which makes a 17 to 20 cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60 g eggs. My oven is a conventional oven so if you have a fan-forced oven you may need to reduce the temperature by 20ºC. 



Apple and Blackberry Crumble Cake (adapted from Nigel Slater’s ‘Tender, volume II)
Ingredients
Filling
75g blackberries, fresh or frozen
1½ tbsp caster sugar

Crumble
50g butter
50g plain flour
60g raw sugar
2 heaped tbsp rolled oats
pinch of cinnamon  

Cake
1 small Granny Smith apple, cored, coarsely grated
1 Granny Smith apple, extra, thinly sliced
1 small lime or lemon zested and juiced
75g blackberries, fresh or frozen
100g butter
100g caster sugar 
2 eggs
75g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
50g almond meal

Filling
Place the blackberries and caster sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring for 5 mins or until the mixture thickens slightly. Set aside to cool completely.

Crumble
Make the crumble by rubbing the flour and butter together then stirring in the sugar, oats and cinnamon to make large crumbs. Place in the fridge until needed.

Cake
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line a 17cm with baking paper. 

Squeeze juice over the apple slices then set to one side. Beat the butter, sugar and rind together until light and smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, and beat together. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl and then add the almond meal. Stir to combine. Add to the mixture in two or three lots alternating with the grated apple.

Spoon half the cake mixture into the prepared pan and then spoon over the blackberry filling. Top with the remaining cake batter before smoothing the surface. Top with reserved apple slices and blackberries and gently press into the cake batter. 



Scatter the crumble on top of the cake and bake for about an hour until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out moist but relatively clean. If the crumble browns on top too quickly, then cover with a piece of foil halfway through whilst it finishes cooking through.

Cool in the pan for 5 mins before turning onto a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. I served it plain dusted with a drift of icing sugar but some thick cream would be a nice accompaniment.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen (or Dad's).

Bye for now,

Jillian

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chocolate easter egg layer cake

chocolate easter egg layer cake

21 Mar 2016

I had no plans to make a 4 layer Chocolate Easter Egg Cake until I went to the supermarket last week and saw the front cover of the Coles magazine.



Inspired by the photo I bought some Easter eggs for decoration, adapted a favourite chocolate cake recipe and made a very large batch of cream cheese icing.





I haven't been sleeping well for a while and when I'm tired I make lots of silly errors. For a 4 layer cake you really need to focus on the task at hand and I couldn't. 





Trying to do the calculations for the icing saw me reach for the calculator and my kitchen scales. In the end I marked the side of each bowl with a wax pen just to ensure I didn't do something really silly.





Normally when I ice a layer cake I chill the cake first then ice the layer before returning the cake to the fridge to allow the cream cheese icing to firm. Once the cream cheese icing has firmed, I add the second layer repeating the process until the final layer has been placed. Except I didn't do that on this occasion. With each layer the cake started to slide, so by the time I'd put all the layers together the cake had a spectacular lean, not unlike the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I wasn't sure the cake would hold together long enough for me to photograph it. I quickly decorated the top of the cake with some Easter eggs then photographed it before putting the cake back into the fridge to firm a little more. Once the cake had been in the fridge overnight, I managed to get it into work in one piece with no further mishaps.





Here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Chocolate Easter Egg Layer Cake - makes a 17 cm -20 cm layer cake.

Cake Ingredients
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
1 cup boiling water
2 cups plain flour
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
1¼ cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
⅔ cup sour lite cream

Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing
60g butter, softened
125g cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups icing sugar mixture

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing
60g butter, softened
125g cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
30 g cocoa, sifted
60 g dark chocolate, melted, cooled
2 cups icing sugar mixture
1 tbs sour lite cream

Easter eggs to decorate

Cake
Grease and line two 17 cm tins with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F.

In a small bowl, combine the cocoa powder with the boiling water with and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Sift flour, bicarb soda and salt into a bowl. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add the eggs to the creamed butter mixture. Add the flour alternately with the chocolate mixture and sour cream and beat just to combine. Pour half the batter into each tin and bake the cakes until tester inserted into the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour. Place on a wire rack until cool.

Icing
To make the vanilla cream cheese icing, use an electric mixer to beat the butter, cream cheese and vanilla in a bowl until very pale and creamy. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating well after each addition.

To make the dark chocolate cream cheese icing, cream the butter with the cream cheese and vanilla; beat until fully incorporated. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating on low speed until well combined. Add cocoa and melted chocolate and mix until well blended. If needed, add some sour cream to make a spreading consistency.

To assemble
When the cakes are cool, remove the baking paper. Use a large serrated knife to level the top of each cake and then halve each cake horizontally. Place one cake layer onto a serving plate. Spread with half the dark chocolate cream cheese icing. Top with another cake layer.

Reserve half the vanilla cream cheese icing. Combine one-third of the remaining cream cheese icing with two-thirds of the dark chocolate cream cheese icing. Spread evenly over the cake. Top with another cake layer.

Combine the remaining dark chocolate cream cheese icing with the remaining cream cheese icing and spread evenly over the cake. Top with the remaining cake layer and reserved cream cheese icing. Decorate with chocolate eggs.





If you'd like to make a less ambitious Easter Egg Cake, you could make a 2 layer 23 cm/9 inch cake cake with this recipe. Instead of fiddling with 4 different fillings I'd only make one, either one batch of the vanilla or one batch of the chocolate cream cheese icing. I think one batch would be enough to both fill and top the cake. I had a sliver of cake after lunch and this cake is no shrinking violet. It's very rich but also very delicious. The cake is very moist and fudge like with lashings of chocolate flavoured cream cheese icing. 

Meanwhile I'm in the process of planning the recipes for my annual Passover week. I have most of the recipes sorted out but if there is anything in particular you'd like me to try just drop me a line - info@jillianleiboff.com

See you all again soon,

Jillian

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spicy chicken burgers on a light brioche bun

spicy chicken burgers on a light brioche bun

11 Aug 2014

I don't usually buy take away but when I'm on holidays I've been known to order the occasional burger. I'm quite partial to a chicken burger and this month's Gourmet Traveller featured a tasty looking chicken burger recipe from Pinbone. It contained fried chicken, which I can't eat, so when I spied a Curtis Stone recipe for oven fried chicken  I thought I'd give that a go instead.



The list of ingredients I needed was quite long so I went in search of hot sauce, panko breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, onion and garlic powder. 

I was going to buy the bread rolls but when reading one of my favourite food blogs I discovered this New York Times recipe for light brioche burger buns. I simplified the technique considerably, put the dough into the fridge to rise overnight and made these at lunch time.



I already had cheese in the fridge but I needed some lettuce leaves and tomatoes. I bought some mini ox heart tomatoes because they're so sweet and juicy! I thought the perfect accompaniment to the burgers would be some of my faux fries.



Here are the simplified instructions for the brioche burger buns using a stand mixer. I also cut the sugar content considerably.

Light Brioche Bun 
Adapted from Hidefumi Kubota, Comme Ça, Los Angeles 
Time: 1 hour, plus 2 to 4 hours’ rising
Ingredients 

3 cups bakers flour 

1/3 cup plain flour 

1 1/2 teaspoons salt 

2 teaspoons dry yeast 

2 teaspoons sugar 

35 g softened butter 

1 egg, beaten 

1 cup warm water 

3 tablespoons warm milk 

Topping 

1 egg 

1 tablespoon water 

Sesame seeds 

In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the flours with the salt, dried yeast and sugar. Add butter and rub into the flour.  

Using the dough hook, mix in the beaten egg and the warm water and milk to form a soft dough. Mix for 8 - 10 minutes before shaping the dough into a ball. Lightly grease the bowl and return the dough to the bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours or you can place the bowl in the fridge overnight. The next day bring the dough to room temperature before proceeding to the next step. 

Line a baking tray with baking paper. Divide the dough into 8 - 12 equal parts. Gently roll each into a ball and arrange 2 to 3 inches apart on the tray. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let buns rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours. 

Preheat oven to 220°C/425°F with rack in centre. Set a large shallow pan of water on the oven floor. Beat remaining egg with 1 tablespoon water and lightly brush the top of the buns. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake, turning the tray halfway through baking, until tops are golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Transfer to a rack to cool completely. 

Yield: 8 - 12 buns.

I have to say these burgers were absolutely delicious. I followed Curtis Stone's instructions to the letter using chicken thigh fillets which I'd brined overnight. The buns came out really well and they were soft and tasty. I used the toppings suggested in the Pinbone recipe - cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayonnaise and hot sauce. These little burgers are so good, I think the Colonel may be in trouble!

P.S Here's my final Delicious Bites column for decor8, a recipe for Petal Cupcakes. As the column won't be running anymore what would you think if I renamed my blog Delicious Bites? It would just be a redirection so my current readers wouldn't have to change a thing. It would give me an opportunity to get a new logo and a new look for the blog. 

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of my idea.

See you all next week,

Jillian

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lemon pistachio shortbread

lemon pistachio shortbread

11 Oct 2010

Greetings from sunny (not) Brisbane. It's rained constantly since I arrived last Saturday and unfortunately I brought all the wrong clothes with me. I've been wearing some of my brother's way too large for me but comfy sweaters to keep me warm. Apart from a quick dash to the store with my Dad this morning, I've not left the house. So much for going to the Valentino exhibition.

I made these cookies on Labour Day and brought them into work for morning tea. The recipe comes from side of a supermarket flour packet. I'm not at home; my parents don't use the same brand of flour and unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down the recipe on the internet for you so apologies. The texture wasn't quite as I'd anticipated - not quite shortbready enough and they certainly weren't sufficiently lemony for my taste. The lemon icing was yummy though and I finished off the bowl for my lunch.

I took the cookies into work, a bit worried that my workmates wouldn't like them. The biscuit tin was empty by day's end, which is always a good sign.

I kept a few at home and I have to say the biscuits do improve their flavour on keeping. I bought another packet of pistachios on Saturday and I have a bag of lemons in the fridge so I do have plans to make some more lemon pistachio shortbreads. I have lots of lemon flavoured treats to make first then I'm going to try making them again using another shortbread recipe I've used before.

I hope you all had lovely weekends and that it wasn't quite so rainy wherever you are.

See you all again on Wednesday,

Jillian

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